Why do humans not come from monkeys?

Question

I forums I always see "evolutionists" (I pray to Darwin too) claim humans don't come from monkeys, but share a common ancestor. Can someone explain this? Because according to my knowledge we come from chimps, or at least their ancestors. As the other apes (gorillas, orang utans) are also monkeys, and split off before the chimps and humans did, it's not hard to conclude that our common ancestors were monkeys. They didn't all spit off and all accidentally became monkeys. Also according to this time line of human evolution we do come from chimps:
http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=060508_human_evolution_02.jpg&cap=The+timeline+of+human+evolution+is+long+and+controversial,+with+significant+gaps.+Experts+do+not+agree+on+many+of+the+start+and+end+points+of+va

So do I have a bad understanding of human evolution (please explain), or does everybody else just say the common ancestor thing not to disturb the anti-evolutionists too much?

green_meklar: You're right about the monkey/ape part. But I've never heard any different than that all apes split up from the branch that we are at the top, with the chimps as our closest relatives. This is the article the time line came from btw.: http://www.livescience.com/animals/060517_hybrid_ancestors.html

You're all right. I made the mistake by messing up the ape/monkey part. It's that still almost everybody calls chimps monkeys, and they are much more money-like than we humans, while technically they aren't monkeys.
Also I'm not claiming we evolved more than other species. I used the humans on top example as point of reference, though that maybe somewhat arrogant from a biologists point of view.
So my question should have been:
Our common ancestor was an ape, looking pretty much like a chimp or gorilla?
If you still read this, what can you say about that?

Answer 1

>"Because according to my knowledge we come from chimps, or at least their ancestors."

Big difference. We do not come from chimps. We share a common ancestor with them. Chimps are just as modern a species as we are. Just as 'evolved'. Just as much a product of 5 to 7 million years of evolution (since our ancestors split) as they are. In short, chimps are NOT some sort of 'unevolved humans' ... they are fully evolved chimps.

Also chimps and the other apes (gorillas, orang utans) are not monkeys. (Monkeys have tais.)

>" Also according to this time line of human evolution we do come from chimps:"

No. It's understandable why you would think that from the wording in the illustration. In that bar that says "DIVERGENCE OF HUMANS FROM CHIMPS" (spanning 5 to 7 million years ago) ... what they really mean is "DIVERGENCE OF THE BRANCH THAT EVENTUALLY BECAME HUMANS FROM THE BRANCH THAT EVENTUALLY BECAME CHIMPS" .... they just didn't have enough room to write all that in the bar.

>"So do I have a bad understanding of human evolution (please explain), ..."

Yes ... but that's not uncommon. Evolution is explained *really* badly in schools ... partly as a result of decades of lobbying from religious fundamentalist groups who not only spread massive amount of misinformation about evolution ... but even in the way they affect school curriculums. For example, someone last week posted a question in which she said that Christian kids were being excused from class when they came to the "evolution section" in biology. I was astounded! Not so much that kids were being excused (that is the nature of some fundamentalist parents ... "don't let my kids hear anything about evolution") ... but that this was causing schools and textbooks to reduce evolution down to a single "section" ... and an *optional* section at that!!

>" ... or does everybody else just say the common ancestor thing not to disturb the anti-evolutionists too much?"

No. The common ancestor thing is absolutely correct ... and absolutely *essential* to understanding evolution correctly.

That is precisely why it is part of that creationist misinformation I am referring to, that evolution says we evolved from chimps (or monkeys). It is a ridiculous *charicature* of what the theory of evolution really says ... an absurd CARTOON version of evolution. I say it is "absurd" because it just doesn't make sense ... why would the ancestor species still be alive with something it evolved into? This is why we get the "why are there still apes/monkeys?" question here daily ... and it is part of the correct answer that modern apes/monkeys are NOT our ancestors, but rather descendants just like we are of a common ancestor.

Why do creationists promote this absurd version of evolution? Because that makes it easier to call evolution "absurd." It is classic "straw-man" argument. When you can't refute your opponent's position, then describe it in an incorrect and absurd way so that you have something you *can* refute.

So feel free to ask questions about evolution. If you get any hostility back ... feel free to email me, or anybody else here, if you like the way they answer your questions. Most of us are on here because we love explaining things.

{edit}

"Our common ancestor was an ape, looking pretty much like a chimp or gorilla? If you still read this, what can you say about that?"

That's more accurate. It didn't look exactly like a chimp, or a gorilla ... the fossil believed to be closest to this common ancestor is the Toumai fossil (Sahelanthropus tchadensis).
http://www.bertsgeschiedenissite.nl/geschiedenis%20mens/sahelanthropus.htm
(sorry, text is in Dutch); or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahelanthropus_tchadensis

Answer 2

>I forums I always see "evolutionists" (I pray to Darwin too) claim humans don't come from monkeys, but share a common ancestor. Can someone explain this?

There's not really anything to explain. It's just common sense. Monkeys exist now, we exist now, and monkeys and us are sufficiently different that it would have taken at least a few million years of evolution to result in that difference. Since all life on Earth traces its ancestry back to the first life forms, somewhere along the line us and modern monkeys had to have had a common ancestor.

>Because according to my knowledge we come from chimps, or at least their ancestors.

Yes, we evolved from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees.

>As the other apes (gorillas, orang utans) are also monkeys, and split off before the chimps and humans did

First, apes are not monkeys, the two are entirely different things and neither is a subset of the other (they are both subsets of primates). Second, I didn't hear it stated anywhere that gorillas and orangutans split off before the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees split apart. Third, even if we assume that's true, it still doesn't mean that we are descended from chimpanzees or from any other modern species besides our own. Even after splitting off, other primates continued to evolve on their own (including splitting off into additional branches), developing into new species that were not the same as those which were our own ancestors.

>Also according to this time line of human evolution we do come from chimps

I'm not at all sure if that's accurate. It's possible that the chart means not modern chimpanzees but the ancestors of chimpanzees. It's possible that it's lumping several species together and calling them all chimpanzees collectively. And it's possible that it's just plain wrong.

Answer 3

It really depends on how far we extend the word monkey. You say chimps are monkeys but most people would say they were apes which differ from other monkeys for example by not having a tail. Still we are monkeys, the sort of monkey which is called an ape. The common ancestor of apes and humans (humans are also perhaps best called apes I'd say)would have come in the group we call monkeys, and indeed old world monkeys. So we can say we are monkeys just as we are primates and mammals. If you look at the classification in theWikipedia article on monkeys you will see that humans are actually classed there as apes, who are old world monkeys.

Answer 4

There are some key words and phrases on that time line... "divergence" and "The timeline of human evolution is long and controversial, with significant gaps. Experts do not agree on many of the start and end points"

If you go back even further, according to the theory, all or almost all species share a common ancestor, tracing back to the simplest building blocks of life. It's generally accepted that our ancestors were once bound to the sea, eventually got their land-legs, and evolved through many different stages just to get to that point in time where we diverged from chimps.

It is kind of playing semantics I guess, because we certainly had a chimp-like primate ancestor; and yeah, that concept really disturbs some anti-evolutionists. But in the end, we ourselves, to this day, remain primates... animals. We just don't like to think of ourselves as such.

Answer 5

it is a technical point really, to do with primate phylogeny. humans, chimps, gorillas, orang-utans and gibbons are classed as 'apes' (Hominoidea). monkeys are a paraphyletic group (they are not a group that is all of the descendants of a single common ancestor). old world monkeys are grouped with the apes as Catarrhini. Catarrhini are grouped with the new world monkeys as simians (Simiiformes). at no point in the human ancestry is any species correctly referred to as a monkey. humans are classed as apes, catarrhines, simians and primates, but not monkeys. however, it may have been more correct to refer to humans as such in the past, i don't know the history of the naming schemes well at all. this makes sense as anti-evolutionists are generally a few decades or centuries behind in the biological sciences.

Answer 6

Humans are not from Monkeys. Darwin is stupid and his theories are flawed. How come human brain is 4 times bigger than chimps and human have less Chromosome in genes. You cannot just evolve from less chromosomes to more chromosomes. Humans are much much much more smart than chimps or monkeys as those animals only know to use a tree branch for banana but we humans can build houses, aircraft, spaceshuttles and TVs. Darwin is a crazy old fart whose so called scientific theories are flawed and he was trying to make sense of no senses. May God correct his soul and forgive his sins. All Darwin is doing is to demonize humans to animals.

Answer 7

humans monkeys